Bird of Paradise
by aniay
Summary: Nothing but a pet, nothing but a beautiful bird. Caged, owned and broken.  WARNINGS: Disturbing content, pet!Starscream, dark themes.
1. Bird of Paradise

Bird of Paradise.

I am nothing but a pretty bird. Perched in my cage like some exotic animal, with a collar encrusted with some red stones that I like to pretend are rubies. "You don't deserve the real ones," my master had said, "but they make your optics glow."

Nothing but a pet, broken, used and owned.

Once I had been great. A long time ago I held the title of Second in Command. Once.

Now I sit in the cage, my wings huddled close, as there is never enough space to spread them out and I can't help but hope he will offline me one day, that the humiliation will end.

There are footsteps, not his but someone else's, thank Primus. It's Thundercracker, once my brother, now... barely a spectator to my silent humiliation. He looks at me with saddened optics as he leaves the datapad on Megatron's desk. I try to call for help, beg him to release me to let me leave and offline peacefully or go to Autobots and let them offline me but all that leaves my vocalizer is a broken "screeeee". Thundercracker looks behind him and with a sorrowful look leaves me alone again.

Until Megatron returns.

Until he takes one more thing from me.

It's terrifying how he managed to take everything from me already. First my rank, then my honour, my trine, my freedom, my dreams, my comm, my voice and my will to live. He's breaking me time and time again, taking myself from me.

I am nothing but a pet.

Pet that is praised when being good and scolded when bad. Pet that has no voice, no free will. Pet completely dependent on it's master's wishes.

He took away my ability to say I'm sorry.

I am.

Took me long enough to admit it to myself. Enough humiliation, enough torture, enough taken away to understand.

I wish I had never disobeyed that day. But I was once a different mech. Once, I was a mech, a proud seeker with his armor shining in the sun. Best among the fliers. Most cunning cunning the fighters.

I am nothing but a property now.

I hate it. I hate him. For doing it to me. I ruff my armor and cycle the air trying to calm myself down. He'll be back soon. I hate the anxiety that he makes me feel. I wait for him, every day, every hour, every minute. Not sure of my own fate.

I hear him, he's coming. His steps are light and not nervous. I flinch when he enters the chamber. I look at him fearfully expecting, anxious, hoping for his touch and afraid he will touch me.

I am intimidated but my meta can't stop but spout invectives at him.

_Look what you did, You broken me, taken my humanity, taken everything from me. Give it back, GIVE IT BACK!_

I scream in my head, unable to hold the liquid rising in my optics. But the only sound leaving my broken vocalizer is a silent whimper.

He notices me and smiles at me. Almost gentle but I am not fooled. I nudge the doors to my cage with my nasal ridge. It's humiliating but I want out. _OUT!_ I will beg and grovel if it only gets me out of this cage. My prison, my punishment.

He chuckles, and comes toward my cage. He reaches between the bars and I nuzzle my head into his hand. Touch is good. It makes me know he didn't take my sensors from me. I hate that I crave his touch.

"Such a pretty bird," he praises me and I coo in some kind of enjoyment. "Have you been a good pet today?"

I scree in response, a long time ago I learned that I shouldn't showing me as being a mech was punished. I am nothing but a pet, mindless animal.

Nothing but a pet.

"Good." He opens the door to the cage and I wait patiently as he attaches the leash to my collar.

I used to struggle once, leap for freedom every time he opened the doors. I do not any more.

Whenever I tried to run, he used to break me more. Not only my mind but my body - one thing that he didn't take from me, though he broken it more times that I can count, and every time he made Hook bring me back to the good shape.

I hate him.

I pad out of the cage finally able to stretch my wings. I purr in contentment, joints popping as my wings spread to their full width. He looks at me appreciatively and strokes my wings which, in turn, makes me mewl in pain. _Too sensitive._ But I don't shy out from his touch.

He's my master, my owner, I am to allow him whatever he does.

I am nothing but a pet.

He tugs on my collar and I follow him obediently like the good pet I am. My meta screams once again at me. Demanding I struggle, I run, I SCREAM! but I choke it inside. Once, I used to have power, now I'm nothing. I don't deserve to be free.

_I want to be free._

I nuzzle his hip where, in his subspace pocket, he caries the energon treats for me and look at him expectantly. He pets my head and withdraws one of them. Holding them between his fingers he offers it to me. I obediently kneel in front of him and open my mouth; He places the treat inside my lips and I take it gently, careful to not graze my denta against his fingers.

_BITE HIM!_ My meta screams.

Once. I used to bite hard, once. Spit the treat out, hating to take anything from his hand.

I am nothing but a pet now. Well trained and obedient. I will not bite a hand that feeds me.

He takes me to the Throne Room, his favourite place to brag about his exotic bird. Decepticons are looking at me disturbed, though once the stares were much harder. Once. Now they are used to having their Leader's pet beside him.

The energon treat was nice, but my tanks are empty. I hear them pinging for a refuel and I curl on myself. _I won't beg, I won't._ I place my head on My master's lap, and allow myself to be petted as he listens to Decepticons' reports. _Try to forget about the tank. My Master will feed me when he decides it's needed. _I lick on his hand in appreciative gesture. But he slaps me away. I howl in pain and curl beside his pedes, nuzzling them absent-mindedly.

I watch the mechs around. Some of them are trying not to look at me. Can't they understand? I am not Starscream any more. I am only Megatron's Pet.

His property.

My meta still fights it, screaming inside me, making me feel frustrated, act rashly and stupidly. Because sometimes I am forgetting that I am nothing but a pet. I hate that I once was a full mech. That once I was a jet, free to take my chassis into the skies.

Free.

Once.

Not any more.

When I'm good, Megatron would take me to the top of the tower and he would let me spread my wings, feel the wind - the reminder of freedom I once had. My meta screams then, wanting to leap out, to jump and either offline or fly free with the birds around.

I enjoy every single moment of the wind in my wings, imagine it's only sky around me and I'm zooming through clouds. Free like a bird.

What a false idiom that is. I am nothing but a bird and I am not happy, nor free, though those short moments make me feel the slivers of happiness in my spark.

I hate the moments after. I feel walls closing in around me, smothering me, choking off the air out of my vents. But I manage to smother the fear down, not to anger my master.

It's when I feel the tug on my leash that I snap out of my memories. There is an energon cube placed in front of me. Every single Decepticon optic is looking at me. I lean my head down and I lap at the sweet substance. It's good, not high-grade, not enough to make me fully energized, but enough to keep me functioning. I look at Megatron and he looks at me, smirks. Then he turns to look at the Decepticons and stays silent. He's proving a point. He had broken the most disobedient mech into well trained pet.

No one will ever decide to disobey him. No one will take my place of a pet. No one will ever free me. I am to be his pretty bird forever.

With a wrong move I spill some of the energon on the floor and with panicked squeal I try to lap it up from the floor, but he notices, he always does.

_I'm sorry I've been bad pet, I'm sorry I'm sorry, Please no._

I beg, but only incoherent squees are leaving my vocalizer. I see his optics flare with rage and I cower before he rises me up by the collar. Choking me, blocking my vents. I struggle but only minutely. _He's my master, I've been bad pet._ He throws me against the wall and I cower, whimpering. He strikes me. I cower and whimper more. Once, I would think about striking back, or running or hiding.

Once.

_I am nothing but a pet now. Bad pet. Such a bad pet._ I spilled the energon. Wasted it. Wasted the precious energy that Megatron shared with me. _I'm sorry, I'm a bad pet._

He tugs at my wing and I scream. _It hurts. STOP IT!_ I struggle now. He had ripped my wing once, when I still didn't realize I was his pet. I had tried to stand up to him then. Regretted it ever since.

But no, he is pulling me to his office again. _Not the cage, not the cage. Please I'll be a good pet, please no. Not the cage. _

He throws me in and my still outstretched wings hit the bars and I wail in pain and in terror. I hate the cage. It's closing in on me. Tight. It's choking me, all around me. Not enough space. My vents are circling, my gyros are spinning. I try to calm down, but I scream, this time loudly. Earning another slap to my faceplate. I bite at his hand and fight. _Not the cage. Please. I hate the cage._

He snaps the door shut and I jump at the door trying to get free, I fight the urge to flap my wings, it will hurt. I cycle the air fast and hard and I'm feeling panic rising in me. I am afraid, so afraid. The space, the bars, they are choking me. I almost can't circle the air. I leap once more at the bars. _LET ME OUT! Let me out._ But there is no one that would listen. Only red optics glowing at me as I whimper helplessly. Hurting. Caged. Broken.

I slide down, holding the bars and sobbing helplessly. _You've broken me, let me out, let me live._

_Let me die._

Once again, nothing but a helpless whimper leaves out my vocalizer. _Please._

He turns around and leaves me alone.

I sob and I cry and I curl into myself.

Once I was a bird that owned the skies. Once I tasted the freedom.

Now I'm lying broken under his feet. Caged, collared, owned.

Nothing but a beautiful pet.


	2. Children of the Wind

A/N: Thank you for all your comments and favourites. It really made me happy that you enjoyed reading this.

Here I give you the second part (of three) and I hope you will like it too. It's on much later note. This time it's Skyfire's POV.

* * *

Data transmission on the old frequency is what wakes me out of recharge. My processor reels for a moment before I scan the package. It is coded with flier's academy key and meta-data which points to seeker origin. Was it Starscream that sent it? Why bother? I haven't heard from him in very long time. Longer still since I saw him last.

I open the file and hope to see Starscream's face - sneering at me, red optics glaring with superiority. I open the video file and what I see are the red optics of a broken mech - dull, lifeless and hopeless. My processor stutters with terror as the understanding of what I'm seeing dawns on me, a gasp wrenches out of my lip-plates as the movie plays. Starscream, on all fours, laps the energon out of a cube standing on the floor. His wings are scraped and dented and Megatron pets him on the head like some overgrown animal. I pause the feed, trying to bring my meta together, trying to process what am I seeing. Is it a cruel joke?

I play it again and flinch with every hit Megatron delivers to the white seeker's frame, my core twisting in terror and anger with every humiliating word and action the Decepticon overlord takes against Starscream.

My meta is screaming at him to run, to get fragging together and stand up to Megatron, but the seeker I see is not the seeker I've known. Every show of submission, every show of obedience from him is like a painful stab of a shock-stick straight into my core. The rage inside me sparks and with every second of the recording it's flame is licking higher. Inflaming, burning.

I turn off the feed eventually, it's too painful. I circle air around my body to let me calm down. There is nothing I can do right now, not with my core twisted in pain. It is only then that I feel that my face-plates are streaked with optic lubricant. I had not even realized I was leaking until now.

Humans call it crying, saying it makes us look more like them. I tried to explain it once that for us it's a glitch generated by heavy distress. The ducts delivering the lubricant are very fragile and in tense moments they tend to leak. For them it might be a show of emotion, for us it's only a minor malfunction.

I comm Prime despite being aware I will wake him up from recharge. This is important. /Prime, there is something you need to see./

Before he arrives I offline my optics, resetting them, re-routing my self-repair to handle the leakage. I can't, it's eluding me.

Later, after showing Prime the feed, and asking, begging him to take action I fall back into restless recharge, Starscream's crimson optics stare into my soul, broken, hurting. He was once my friend. He might be an enemy now, but not even he deserves such treatment.

Within days Prime takes action and I find myself in the middle of the battle, Jazz's solemn "We've got him Prime" on my comm.

Before Optimus calls the retreat I search for Megatron, the hunger for revenge coiled around my core, licking it with flames of white rage: the mix suddenly exploding with a thirst for Megatron's energon. The feeling is so raw and powerful it makes my processor spin. I want to offline him permanently, NOW!

He's there, calling Prime a soft spark, for wanting to save Starscream.

I had never been so grateful that I had agreed to get weapon mods. The rifle is humming close to my chassis, my meta screams with "REVENGE!" and my HUD turns red seconds before I shoot, the rage making me quiver with anticipation. I want to kill him.

I want to obliterate him.

But then Prime calls the retreat and my meta clears out enough to let me reconsider my actions. I was about to offline another bot in cold energon. I should calm down the next time I go into battle. Megatron should be brought to justice, not be killed.

Too easy for him.

He should suffer the multitude of whathe made Screamer go through. He will suffer if I get my way.

Back at the Ark I camp myself by the med-bay's door. I hear Ratchet cursing Megatron, promising him death.

I won't let him beat me to it.

It's days until they let me see Starscream and when Ratchet finally allows me in, I come into med-bay and scoop the seeker up my arms, cradling him close despite the tubing still connected to him. I can feel his chassis thrum with energy. Ratchet screams at me, but I ignore him.

"I'm here, Starscream, you are safe now," I whisper into his audio and thread my fingers over his air-vents, careful to not touch the wings still marred with ugly silver welds.

Starscream would have killed me the instant he realized what I was doing, but he's not aware now and I indulge just a little bit in comforting him like I would a sparkling.

All the damage he's taken, It's vast and Ratchet adds that his processor is almost as broken as his body.

I can't believe it.

It's not possible for anyone to break Starscream. Superior, proud Starscream. He hadn't become Air Commander for nothing. He was the best among us, and his processing power almost as big as Perceptor's.

Megatron could have bent him, but not broken him.

I ask Ratchet to online the jet but he declines adamantly saying it's to early, that he still needs to clean his fuel lines, that he wants Smokescreen to assess the mental damage.

"No" I protest, holding seeker's prone form a bit closer. Starscream is a seeker, his meta is this of a flier and no ground mech will ever understand how it works. If it were so easy then frame-changes would be much more frequent. Snap, personality component transferred and you can fly. But it never is that easy. It takes more than wings to fly.

"I will take care of him... let me try first." I ask and Ratchet grudgingly agrees.

I lie him back on the med-berth he was on previously, carefully arranging him.

"Go catch some recharge, Ratchet. I'll stay with him. If something happens I'll comm you."

It takes Prime to drag Ratchet out of the med-bay. Fighting and screaming, but he needs it badly.

I'm alone with Starscream, and he is not sneering at me, not disagreeing with my ideas, nor is he sulking at me. He's just laying there, motionless. Calm.

If not for the colors still bright over the beautiful frame, one could think him offline.

It had been so long since I last saw him, before the video that was sent to me. If Megatron had had him in captivity for so long... I saw a cage on the recording, tiny, compared to seeker's size. I saw him huddled inside, wings close around him. That must have been painful. What had Megatron had done to him? It must have taken him time, because I can't imagine Starscream not resisting, not fighting for himself.

Megatron treated him worse than a pet, didn't even tend to his wounds. He had him obviously under-energized and... the collar is still laying on a shelf, red stones glinting in the sun that falls inside the med-bay through the small window.

I trace my finger over the edges of his helm. He was once so proud, unbreakable. Now he seems only a shadow of himself, even in stasis. The welds on his wings are marring his beautiful finish.

If I'm here then I can do something. I search the med-bay for paint nanites. I find them and a brush to apply them with. The brush is small, too small for me and I have to go slow but with clumsy but gentle sweeping motions, I cover the welds with the nanites, watching as the raw silver changes into the pure white of his wings, as the red blooms along the white covering, as metallic blue livens up on his hands, hiding the nasty scars, making him beautiful again.

When I'm sure every single scar is hidden, still there but invisible if you don't search for it, I take the wax and the softest cloth I own from my subspace and with gentle, barely there touches I polish the armor until it's shining. Starting from pedes up his legs, chest, arms, wings. In the end I polish the beautiful face-plates, admiring their perfection. He likes to look good and that's the least I can do for him now.

It takes few days for Ratchet to agree to try and bring Starscream online. The medic thinks he should be strapped to the berth, not knowing how he will react and I try to reason with him. You want a calm flier - give him sky. The moment he realizes he's strapped down, he'll start to panic.

We end up with agreement that I will hold the seeker. Now he is lying prone in my arms again. Ratchet restarts him an I can feel the white chassis vibrate as multiple systems are coming online. He's heating up, the power plant processing the energon faster. I see the moment his optics online and he vents in air, going rigid before struggling.

"Let me out, let me out, I'm a good pet, gonna be a good pet. Not the cage, please, not the cage," The avalanche of words spills from his mouth and he is whimpering helplessly. I coo to him, blowing cool air from my vents onto his ailerons.

Ratchet and Prime are watching with serious face-plates, they even take a step towards us, but I comm them that /I'll handle it./ "You are safe, Starscream."

He looks at me with optics that don't hold the intelligence they once did. They are those of a scared animal.

"I'm not Starscream, not Starscream any more, I'm a pet, master's pet." He nuzzles my hand with his nasal ridge and coos, "I'll be a good pet, please not the cage, I'll be good."

His words hurt. Every raspy sound that leaves his vocalizer is like a grind in my circuitry - painful. He has lost himself in what Megatron has broken him to be.

"Pet me, please, stroke my head," he talks to himself, probably not even realizing we can understand it, "I've been silent, I've been good, you don't need to hurt me." He doesn't even recognize me.

"Starscream" I stroke his head despite the nauseating disgust at what Megatron done to him and he leans into the touch, happy to be petted. "Starscream, I'm Skyfire, do you remember me?" I make him look at me and wait for a light of understanding in his crimson optics.

It never comes.

And then he's babbling again. And I feel sadness overflowing my core. The damage is vast.

Ratchet's face-plates are scrunched in the same disgust and pain I feel. He offers to offline his vocalizer again. The amount of humiliation the seeker must have gone through to break him like that... I can't stand him wailing like that, but I grind my denta and cradle Starscream closer to myself. Too late I realize I've done it too hard.

He starts to struggle again, now screeching, trying to get free. I try to calm him down, but he's crazy with fear and there is only one way to calm him down.

I scoop him up and run out of med-bay. Ratchet and Prime are yelling after me. They tell me to stop but I can't, I have to get Starscream out of the Ark.

They won't understand.

The seeker is wailing and struggling and screaming and I am barely able to hold him down strong enough as not to damage him. "Just a moment, Starscream, just a moment and we'll be free again."

I run out of the Ark and shoot into the sky, altitude climbing fast. Air is whooshing around me as I fly as high as possible. The roar of air turns Starscream rigid and silent against my chassis, his vents circling in fear as his wings are trembling. Higher, constantly higher.

Theonlyway to heal a flier is to let him fly. I check the altitude and when I am sure that we are high enough, I simply release him out of my arms.

He falls down. Screaming and flailing, like a fish out of water but, It IS his element, he just needs to remember.

"Fly you bucket of bolts" I scream at him and watch his panicked face-plates, ready to bolt and catch him before he hits the ground. He looks at me and a gleam of recognition lights up in those crimson optics.

I can hear his thrusters engage and with a sonic boom and wave of heat he shoots past me, the temperature almost burning on my armor.

He flies even higher until he is barely a dot seen from the earth, only to turn off his engines and nosedive towards the ground in neck-breaking manoeuvre - gaining speed, screaming with excitement. Suddenly he engages his thrusters and shoots back into the sky again.

"I'm flying!" He screams so loud even I can hear him and a loud, heart-felt laugh follows, as he barrel rolls under me and then loops, whooping with joy.

I can feel my own ailerons tingle as I imagine what he's feeling. The first flight, excitement and unbridled joy, the closest to ecstasy that we fliers can feel. I shoot past him, only to join the seeker in his game of tag with the wind, in a sparkling's play of hide and seek with the clouds.

We are free again, two sparkling jets on their first venture into the sky. Birds discovering their wings.

We are free.

We fly until the sun starts to set and even then we fly even higher catching up the last warm rays of the nearest star, basking in the golden glow, enjoying the caress of warmth against our armor. I watch him and my optic fluid is leaking again.

He's been bent, but not broken.

After what feels like ages I transform and invite him inside my cargo hold. He snuggles inside, trying to curl his wings but then he realizes he doesn't have to.

"Skyfire," he whispers against my deck before slipping into peaceful recharge.

We are fliers, we are free. Sky is our domain and it's all we need. We are the children of the wind and it's our only healer.


End file.
